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10/29/2023

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Pavel

The Good/Altruistic vs Evil/Selfish is also how I've interpreted alignments for the modern world, but when I run a game for players, I tell them to use the alignments as an inspirational guideline for their characters, and not as any sort of mechanic, and not to be bound by it. Think of what *your character* would do, not what a Lawful Good/Chaotic Neutral character would do, and maintain that consistency.

Heck, even in the real world, people can act consistently and predictably, without being boxed into any of the nine squares.

JLC

Yes, I've always thought that alignment ought to be descriptive. Figure out what your character is like, and then find where they fit on the chart.

madrocketsci

I dunno, I always interpreted Law/Chaos as "agreeableness" or gregariousness. Sociality/Asociality. As someone who is very much disagreeable, and not a city mouse, some mountain-man cabin a comfortable distance (weeks journey) from civilization seems ideal.

Another way to look at it is the tendency to confuse authority with morality. Some people do this, very few people are immune (due to our unfortunate instincts as social animals). Milgram obedience experiment - someone who is "chaotic" doesn't fundamentally care that you're wearing a labcoat or a badge or a funny hat when you give your orders.

madrocketsci

Maybe a different take on "law/chaos" is "how big an org-chart can you hold in your head?" Can you work within a large organization naturally as an agent of said organization, or can you only really deal with people interpersonally? Does it seem nautral to you or unnatural to you to deal with other people as a representative of some group, as opposed to only yourself?

If Steve comes by wearing a uniform to perform some action ordered by someone-else/some group; is he an agent of organization X, or is he Steve playing dressup and making demands on behalf of distant jerks because he's too much of a "joiner" to do things on his own initiative?

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